Newsletter-145-March-1983

NEWSLETTER 145 MARCH
1983

HADAS DIARY

Tuesday March
1: Egypt, Gift of the Nile, by Vivienne Constantinides

This lecture
could, perhaps, be described as the most gracious of apologies. Miss
Constantinides, daughter of the society's founder Mr T. Constantinides, was
invited to the 21st birthday party last year. Regretfully, she was away at the
time - on the Nile, in fact and sent her apologies, offering to lecture to
HADAS was some compensation. We accepted, gratefully.

Tuesday April
12: Early Mining and Metallurgy, from its inception to the

Bronze Age, by
Dr Paul Craddock. Please note: This lecture is the second Tuesday of the month.

Wednesday May
184 Annual General Meeting

All these
meetings are at Hendon Library The Burroughs, NW4 Coffee 8pm, lectures 8.30pm.

Roman Group:

Tuesday March
29: Roman group meeting, hosted by Enid Hill, 56 Northway, NW11, 8pm. Everyone
welcome, though Enid would welcome prior notice from those attending (455 8388).
The Roman group is also planning outings to Welwyn Bath House and to
Colchester, with experts on hand to show members behind the scenes.

Walking the
Streams of Barnet: The walk planned for January 30 had to be cancelled, but the
exploration of Deans Brook was continued on February 20 and will be reported in
the next Newsletter. A further walk has been arranged for Sunday March 6 - meet
at 10am at the junction of Hale Lane and Highview Gardens, Edgware. If you
intend to come, please notify Sheila Woodward, 952 3897.

An event
elsewhere: Tuesday March 8: Open meeting to discuss two recently produced
reports: one by a British Museum Working Party (Chairman Ian Longworth) on the
Selection and Retention of Environmental and Artefactual Material from
Excavations; the other by a Council for British Archaeology Working Party (Chairman
Barry Cunliffe) on the Publication of Archaeological Excavations. To be held at
the lecture theatre of the Linnaean Society, Burlington.House, Piccadilly, W1.
Programme: 11am to 12.30pm Longworth Report; 1.30pm to 4pm Cunliffe Report.

Copies of both
reports may be obtained from CEA, 112 Kennington Road, London SEll 6RE (please
send an A4 Self-addressed envelope, stamped 20½p). The meeting is open to all.
You are asked as a courtesy, if you intend to go, to notify Lyn Greenwood at
CBA (582 0494) beforehand.

Barnet's
Neighbour is the title of the current exhibition at Church. Farm House Museum,
celebrating 50 years of the Stanmore and Harrow Historical Society.

There's much of
neighbourly interest, and it remains on show until March 13.

ELIZABETH
ALDRIDGE

West Heath
diggers will be saddened to hear of the death of Elizabeth Aldridge at the end
of January. Only 42, Elizabeth had been disabled for 15 years and had also been
fighting cancer for the last two years of her life.

Liz was a
person of immense courage and gaiety and so made light of her disabili-, ties
that her wheelchair was seen forgotten in the enjoyment of her company and it
was not allowed to interfere with her many activities Among these, processing
and section drawing at West Heath were just two. Liz not only sailed through
her extra-mural Diploma in Archaeology, wrestled with the organisation of site
watching for HADAS, but she also founded the Highgate Antique Collectors' Club
and still found time for Church and other Highgate activities.

Liz will be
much missed and it will be a long time before her example is forgotten. We send
our deepest sympathy to all her family and are very pleased that her son,
Simon, is still a junior member.

That modest
invention, so useful to generations of modern mothers, was not the Victorian
inspiration it might have been assumed he revealed. There was a 19th century
patent for it, taken-out by an enterprising American and turned into a fortune
in hard cash by the-Birmingham manufacturer who bought it from him for just
000. But the American's design did not copy one of the few safety pins which
had survived through medieval and later times.' It bore far more resemblance to
those early in the European pin tradition, back in the first millennium BC.

"Small
inventions like the safety pin often get very little attention,-even though the
impact they-made upon society was very considerable," said Dr Alexander,
explaining his own reasoning for studying them. "Once invented, the safety
pin took on various roles apart from simply holding clothes together. It
developed into very decorative brooches, it was used-to indicate status in'
society.

His detailed
study had shown several thousand different types were in use in first millenium
BC Europe, and far more throughout the world. Study of them helped in the
recognition of regions and trade connections and in dating. They were found in
graves and at settlement sites, in-votive deposits, in craftsmens' hoards.

Safety pins- or
fibulae as they were more familiarly known to archaeologists - may well have
developed from long thin shoulder pins, pierced to-take a piece of wire or
'cord to aid their fastening potential. Simple pins-of the safety type tame
into use in the northern part of the European plain around 1200 to 1000 BC and
the style lasted for some 600 years. A quite different-line of development
could be traced in the northern Alpine region, spreading through into Greece even.
And the safety pin was eventually in use from Scandinavia to Persia. It was,
particularly, the badge of the Celts.

Dr Alexander's
slides showed the variety of pins, plain or highly decorated. Prizes among the
latter are surely due to an.extraordinary Etruscan 'find, in gold, and another,
also in gold, in Scythian style, the functional pin decidedly inferior to its
animalistic decoration.

The Romans'
effectively killed off the safety pin, wearing clothes which rendered

safety pins
came flooding back". But only temporarily, for from the middle of

of the first
millenium AD to the 19th century they were little usedI

"Even if
the origins and early development of these fibulae are now fairly obvious there
are many thousands of safety pins that can be studied and fitted into the
general pattern," he said, exhorting his audience to do the work.
"There is work waiting to be done on their local significance, who was
wearing what kind, which sort of social or sexual grouping was wearing them in
which region. This knowledge will only come through very detailed study of the
ways of making them and styles of ornamenting.

"When their
distribution and associations are worked out, and their chronological position,
then perhaps eventually their social significance will be worked out. Certainly
for the first millenium BC we will know much more about what is now an obscure
set of communities."

LIZ SAGUES

AN
UN-AXE-PELTED SHOPPING TRIP

One of the most
appealing things about archaeology is its unexpectedness. One of our members
was going shopping the other week - just an ordinary everyday trip to the
butcher and baker. As she passed a friend's house, out he came.
"Hey," he. said, "I've got something for you - something you can
use in exhibitions or suchlike." He dived back inside, returning a moment
later with a plastic carrier.

"It's
rather heavy, I'm afraid," he said, handing it over. It. was it weighed a
metaphorical ton. However, when she got it home she knew it was worth every
ounce. Inside were 11 Paleolithic hand-axes, in dark grey flint with tobacco
brown streaks. They range in size from the tough largest, which are
roughed-out, unfinished shapes between 5.8 and 6 inches at their longest and 3.7
and 4 inches at their widest, to .a completed job, which fits snugly into the
palm of the hand and is 3.5 inches by 2.8 inches at its maximum points..

Alas, the donor
had no idea of the provenance. They had been given to him with no word of
whence they came. He will try to find out, but is a bit doubtful of success.

However, though
their archaeological value is minimised by this fact, they will be very useful
as specimens for demonstrations, displays, etc. And they do underline the text
with which we began. Who else but an archaeologist could return from a shopping
trip with 11 stone axes, thousands of years old, nestling between four fillets
of plaice and a pound of sprouts?

ROMAN EXIT

The End of
Roman Britain was the subject of the CBA Group VII conference at Welwyn Garden
City on February 19. Five papers were read by a distinguished list of speakers
- Coinage and the End of Roman Britain by Richard Reece, Farming in the First
Millenium by Peter Fowler, Roman to Saxon Mucking by Margaret Jones, Towns of
the South East in Later Roman Britain and Beyond by Harvey Sheldon and Problems
of the Late Frontier as exemplified by Wroxeter and North Wales by Graham
Webster, with a splendid review of the proceedings by Kate Pretty.

There was
general agreement about the timing of the collapse of Roman rule in Britain -
new issues of coinage end about 410 AD, town life declined at different times
though Wroxeter continued into the 5th century and many villas in the
country-side continued in occupation as well, until economic reasons or
personal danger caused them to be abandoned. The official connection with Rome
ended in 410, but Roman civilisation was to some degree maintained until 442.

No doubt a
large section of the population continued to live in their own area merely
changing Roman rulers for Saxon. Others moved to the west of England.

At Mucking, in
Essex, there was a site in occupation from Neolithic to medieval times. Saxon
houses have been found on top of Roman dwellings and Roman arte­facts and Roman
technology were adopted. A radio-carbon date of 470 for Anglo-Saxon material
suggests that there may not have been much of a time lag between Roman and
Saxon occupation.

ENID HILL

ROUND-UP OF
REVIEWS

So many
publications have stacked up recently for review in the Newsletter that all we
can offer you is a quick skip-through.

First, four
books from Shire Publications - the first three in the Shire Archae­ology
series, the fourth another "Discovering".

Medieval Roads,
by geography lecturer Brian Paul Hindle; 29 pages of text, 21 pages of graphs
and maps (showing itineraries of medieval kings and reproductions of part of
the Matthew Paris and Gough maps) and 11 pages of photographs. Throws light on
a rather neglected subject.

Medieval
Fields, by David Hall; 55 pages of mixed text, photos and plans of field
systems, written by an archaeologist. Good material on how to reconstruct

medieval
open-field furlong patterns even when a ridged field has been virtually
ploughed flat in modern times.

Village Plans,
by Brian K. Roberts (another geographer). Only three photographs (a miniscule
number for a Shire book) but many plans, distribution maps and models. Some of
these are reproduced in too small a scale to be useful. An attempt is made to
classify types of villages according to basic shapes, regularity or
irregularity of pattern and presence or absence of greens. Interesting, but
rather heavy going.

Discovering
Churchyards, by Mark Child. Eighty-page booklet (centre 16 pages photos) with
irdex and bibliography. This is a "dipping" book rather than a steady
read. There are, among other plums to be plucked from it, a slightly
hit-and-miss list of famous.graves, ranging from Algernon Charles Swinburne
(buried Bonchurch, Isle of Wight) to Unity Mitford (Swinbrook, Oxon); a survey
of lychgates and boundaries; a chapter on churchyard crosses; something on
types of memorial, from headstones and graveboards to chest, bale and tea-caddy
tombs; and a section on the flora and fauna of the churchyard.

All the above
are available from HADAS, the first three price £1.95, the fourth£1.75, plus
postage. Don't forget that Pete Griffiths has taken over as distributor of
publications, so you can get these from him at 8 Jubilee Avenue, London Colney,
Herts AL2 1QG (phone 61 23156).

Archaeology in
Camden: 12-page illustrated booklet produced by the Inner London Archaeological
Unit, price 80p including postage from Imex House, 42 Theobalds Road, WC1X 8NW.
Interesting for HADAS members because it mentions the West Heath dig and has a
photo of the site (by Peter Clinch) and of some of the finds (by Eric Ward).

The Kemps of
Hendon and Church Farm House, by F.W.H. Abrams (published
by the Mill Hill and Hendon Historical Society). Story of the Kemp family's
Hendon links onwards from Tudor times, when they leased the moated manor of
Clitterhouse from St .Bartholomew's Hospital. Details of Daniel Kemp's tenure
of Church Farm and the building which is now Church Farm House Museum.
Obtainable at £1, including postage, from John Collier, 47 Longfield Avenue,
NW7 2EH.

The
Ravenscrofts: Barnet and District Local History Society Bulletin No. 22
(November 1982). This account, by Ralph Walker, follows three generations of a
family linked with Chipping Barnet in the 17th century. After first-providing
the family background in 16th century ?lintshire, Mr Walker brings Thomas

Ravenscroft
(whose effigy can be seen in the Ravenscroft chapel of Barnet Parish Church) to
Fold Park, Galley Lane, Barnet. Thomas was father of Barnet's "great benefactor",
James Ravenscroft (1595-1680), who endowed the Ravenscroft alms houses, or Jesus'
Hospital, in Wood Street,HADAS members interested in this booklet can find out
further details from Mr W.S. Taylor, Curator of the Barnet Museum, Wood Street,
Barnet.

Camden History
Review No. 10 Another excellent issue in this series by the Camden History
Society. This is the last issue to be edited by Christopher Wade, who has many
links with HADAS. Members who came to the 1982 Christmas dinner will remember
him speaking on the history of Burgh House, of which he is the honorary
curator. Articles in the review include one on H.G. Wells' Camden connections;
Georgian Catholics in Hampstead; census studies in the Vale of Health;
Highgate's Fitzroy Farm; and winning essays in a competition about Camden
schooldays.

Copies from 28
Willoughby Road, NW3 1SA, £1.90 plus postage.

Cuttings from
the Harrow Observer for 1932, compiled by Gordon Dodd. This 30-page roneod
publication is the golden jubilee edition of Chronicle, the Stanmore and
Historical Society's journal. The society was founded in 1932 as the Edgware
and Stanmore Historical and Antiquarian Society. We start at the top of page 1
with what was showing at the Cosy Cinema, Harrow on the Hill, on January 1 1932
(Richard Barthelmess and Clark Gable in The Finger Points, Richardo Cortez and
Loretta Young in Big Business Girl), and we go through to December 30 1932, when
the leading article has some depressing - but so familiar - points to end on:
"The year has been a disappointing one to all classes of the community and
it leaves most people poorer than they were at the beginning. Unemployment has
increased, wages have been reduced, salaries cut, and those who have what the
tax authorities called an 'unearned income' find themselves with mostly reduced
dividends or none at all... The Few Year holds out no very definite promise of
incomes going up or of income tax coming down..." Copies of the booklet
are obtainable from Roy Abbott, 7 The Ridgeway, Stanmore, HA7 4BE, price 50p
plus 20p postage.

HADAS FIELD
GROUPS

The committee
of HADAS recently gave its approval for the setting up of Field Groups
throughout the borough. The groups will be mainly responsible for identifying
by means of surveys, site-watching, field-walking, etc, potential sites for
excavation and reporting features noted in trenches on building sites,
particularly in areas of known archaeological interest. Much of the job
requires a network of people able to keep an eye on their local area and for
which no expert knowledge is needed.

Two groups are
already in action - Finchley and Edgware ­ and it is hoped that other groups
will be formed soon. If you are interested in taking part and have not yet been
contacted, get in touch with:

Mr G.H.
Musgrove (346 0128) for the Church End and St Paul's wards of Finchley Mrs T.M.
Smith (958 9159) for the Edgware area

Mr A.F. Dean
(205 3201) for the Burnt Oak area

For other areas
contact Elizabeth Sanderson (950 3106) who is co-ordinating the activities of
the groups. She would particularly like to hear from people who are able to
visit any of the borough planning departments during office hours to look at
planning applications.

June Porges
writes: I regret that owing to a little absent-mindedness I have no record of
the donors of some of these publications. I would like to know the members who
gave them if they would care to contact me. In the meantime, many thanks to the
named and to the un-named.

Council for
British Archaeology: Archaeological Bibliography for Great Britain

and Ireland 1977.

Council for
British Archaeology: Archaeology in Britain, 1980 and 1981.

Omnibus (a new
magazine for sixth-formers and others interested in the ancient

Greeks and
Romans, published by JACT) Nos 1-4, 1981 and 1982.

Fedden, R(ed)
Treasures of the National Trust, Cape, 1976.

Wilkinson, F.
The castles of England, Philip, 1973.

Lawson, A.
Discover Unexpected London, Elsevier Phaidon, 1977.

Larousse
Encyclopedia of Prehistoric and Ancient Art, Hamlyn, 1970.

Voronikhina, L.
The Hermitage: guidebook.

Oakley, K.P.
Man the Toolmaker Sixth edition, 1975.

Colyer, C.
Lincoln: The Archaeology of an Historic City, 1975.

Working party
of the Ancient Monuments Board for England Committee for Rescue

Archaeology:
Principles of Publication in Rescue Archaeology, Department of

the
Environment, October 1975.

Bagshawe, R.W.
Roman Roads, Shire, 1979.

Hedges, A.A.C.
Bottles and Bottle Collecting, Shire, 1975.

Harris', R.
Discovering Timber-Framed Buildings, Shire, 1978.

Hodgkiss, A.G.
Discovering Antique Maps, Shire, 1975.

British Museum
Society Bulletin, March and November 1979, March and July 1980

Bulletin of
Experimental Archaeology, no 3, 1982.

Burgess, C.
Excavations at Houseledge, Black Law, Northumberland, and their implications
for earlier Bronze Age settlements in the Cheviots, Northern

Archaeology, I
(1) 1980, pp 5-12.

Jobley, G. A
Field-guide to Prehistoric Northumberland, part 2, Northern

History
booklets No 46. (photocopy)

From Miss V
Sheldon:

Farquhar,
J.V.C. The Saxon Cathedral and Priory Church of St Andrew, Hexham,

1935.

From Philip
Venning:

Vafpoulou-Richardson,
C.E. Greek Terracottas, Ashmolean Museum, 1981.

Aaron, H.
Pillar to Post: Looking at Street Furniture, Warne, 1982.

From Ted
Sammes:

The Scroll:
journal of the Maidenhead Archaeological and Historical Society,

vol 3 nos 1-5,
September 1977 - Autumn 1982.

DOCUMENTARY
GROUP ON THE TRAIL...

One project on
which the Documentary Group is currently working concerns a leaflet on the
Archaeology of the Borough of Barnet, to be published later this year by LBB
Council.

Many HADAS
members will remember the Town Trails which the Borough Planning Department
produced a couple of years back. There were four of them, on Hadley, Mill Hill,
Church End, Finchley and Hampstead Garden Suburb. (At about the same time the
Libraries Department published a fifth Town Trail on Hendon.)

The first four
trails were concertina-like leaflets which, when opened, contained maps, line
drawings and an explanatory text about each locality. The Planning Department
is now working on a leaflet in a similar format (though not a Town Trail) which
will des ribe the known archaeological sites in the borough and the various
chance finds which have been made, as well as giving a few general ideas about
the aims and techniques of archaeology.

The idea of
this leaflet was first floated at a meeting organised by the Planning
Department to which representatives of the Mill Hill and Hendon Historical
Society, the Barnet and District Local History Society, HAMS and LAMAS were
invited. Following this meeting it was agreed that HADAS should be responsible
for collecting together the material for the text of the leaflet, and this has
now been done, with the help of several members, including Daphne Lorimer,
Brigid Grafton Green, Ted Sammes and Bill Firth.

Now the
information is assembled it's surprising how much there is to say about
archaeology in our area: at the moment we're wrestling with the problem of how
to cram an archaeological quart into a pint-sized leaflet. We'll let you know
how we get on!

BRIGID GRAFTON
GREEN

A THURSDAY
LAMENT

All the
indications are that, next evening lecture year, there'll be a sad omission
from the University of London Extra-Mural Department prospectus - the Thursday
evening lectures at the Institute of Archaeology, which for so long have been
used as a platform to air new archaeological information in series with a
variety of expert speakers expounding on a common theme.

The reason for
their ending, though it may be only temporary, is two-fold. The first, and most
distressing, is the poor attendance. This year particularly some

evenings - in a
season hampered only once by weather problems - saw only a dozen faithfuls
scattered about the institute benches. Inevitably, such lack of support means a
hefty loss and the cut-hit extra-mural department simply cannot afford to
continue that. Second is the pressure on the time of extra-mural lecturer Tony
Legge, who needs to visit more of the department's archaeology classes. With
his own lecturing commitments in diploma and post-diploma classes, plus taking
the chair on Thursdays, there's effectively only one evening left for class
visits.

If we're lucky,
the lectures may be resumed after an interval of a year or two.

HAMS members
have been less enthusiastic than usual in their support of the 1982-83 series,
on New Techniques in Archaeology. Few, even, turned up to support member Paul
Craddock, whose subject last month was not that on which he'll be speaking in
the HADAS April lecture (he'd given that at the very beginning of the series)
but one of particular interest to anyone who has worked on the West Heath dig.

He was
describing the technique of soil phosphate analysis, to identify sites of past
human and animal habitation through the phosphate-rich rubbish which had been
deposited and which remains easily and cheaply identifiable today despite the
passing of years or the disturbance of sites. He tried out the technique at
West Heath, though that was not among the sites he talked about last month. Instead,
he revealed how phosphate study showed that the body of the Saxon king

Redwald could
have been buried at Sutton Hoo, how work in the Fenlands project had revealed
an iron age village where no archaeological remains had previously been
suspected, how it seemed that the neolithic and bronze age flint miners at
Grimes Graves had no settled habitation in the vicinity and how crucial
evidence could be recovered from sites otherwise so ploughed out that they
seemed totally archaeologically barren. Another, earlier, talk was also
essential for Mesolithic enthusiasts, though as Peter Rewley-Conwy was standing
in at the last moment for a flu-struck expert on the microscopy of ancient
ceramics there could have been no advance warning of the subject.

Dr Rewley-Conwy
described his work on the Danish late Mesolithic sites of the Ertebolle
culture, where he had established a pattern of unusually settled habi­tation,
based on central campsites, where a variety of natural resources were used.
These central sites were supplemented by seasonal camps whose occupants
exploited particular seasonal resources - wild pigs, porpoises, eels, cod,
whooper? wens and, crucially, oysters. Oysters, he said, formed only a small
proportion, if the diet, some five to ten per cent of the calorific total, but
their avail­ability in the early spring.when other resources were scarce was
vitally important. And the changes in seashore conditions around 3,000 BC,
which prompted a decline of the oyster beds, had been the factor which had
upset the delicate balance of the Ertebolle economy and led to the acceptance
of farming.

I'd have
regretted missing, too, Harry Kenward's entertaining and informative, if hardly
always palatable, account of compost-covered Viking York, an image reconstructed
from beetle remains. Or learning from John Gowlett of the possi­bilities
provided by accelerators in C14 dating, meaning that far smaller samples were
required and offering the possibility one day of precise dating of Paleolithic
cave painting. Or Mike Baillie's splendingly delivered account of how the
dendrochronological sequence for Ireland, and beyond, was built up. Or Gordon
Hillman's revelations of the dietary habits of cock-fight watchers in medieval
Usk (groats, not particularly well digested, and blackberries, so the seed
remains indicated).

But the
sparsely-filled benches were in sad contrast to the sort of audiences earlier
series attracted. There must be many HADAS members who remember Michael Day
demonstraiting the gait of 1470 man - or was it one of his later
descendants? to a lecture hall with
every seat filled, aisles crowded with extra chairs and several rows of
listeners standing at the back. And that wasn't exceptional. Thursday evenings
at the Institute of Archaeology will be sorely missed.